by David Weber
“And that’s exactly why I think they might be able to pull it off,” Nahrmahn agreed. “Star Rising’s being careful to get the bishop on board, and now that Zhynchi’s run for it, I think Lyauyan has the inside track in the Church, at least in Boisseau.”
Serabor considered that for several seconds, then nodded.
Archbishop Baudang Zhynchi, the Archbishop of Boisseau, was a Church apparatchik of the old school, bitterly opposed to Rhobair II’s reforms. But he was also over eighty years old and increasingly frail. In fact, he would have retired at least two or three years ago if the Harchongese Church hierarchy had been one iota less determined to prevent Rhobair from replacing any more of its members. As it was, Zhynchi hadn’t been about to request replacement, and none of his fellow archbishops would have been at all happy if he had. At the same time, age, ill health, and a gathering loss of mental focus had precluded him from keeping a firm grip on the Reformists in his own archbishopric.
And Zhynchi had panicked when the first reports of the sack of Shang-mi reached his cathedral in Zhynkau. It was probably unfair to blame a man his age and whose mind was increasingly fuddled even when it came to dealing with routine matters, but he’d been on the first galley south, and his unceremonious departure had created an abrupt vacuum at the very apex of the province’s religious hierarchy. More than that, his cowardice—which was the only word for it, whatever excuses one might make for him—had further undermined the Church’s hardliners.
Yaupang Lyauyan, the Bishop of Pauton, was quite a different sort of prelate. He was only forty-seven, thirty-plus years younger than Zhynchi, and one of those Reformists Zhynchi had been unable to repress properly. His see wasn’t wealthy, but Pauton was the province’s third-oldest diocese, after those of Zhynkau and Quijang. That gave him more seniority than his youth might otherwise have suggested, and he was not only younger than either of those other two bishops, he was far more charismatic, as well. In fact, unlike them, he was actually trusted by the peasants and serfs of his diocese. If Star Rising could enlist him in the nascent provisional government he was trying to create.…
“I still think it would be iffy,” the duke said, “but you and Maikel have a point about Lyauyan.”
“And bayonets aren’t the only way to keep the peace,” a soprano voice pointed out.
Lady Elayn Clareyk, Duchess Serabor, was ten years younger than her husband, with exotic—by Old Charisian standards—golden hair, green eyes, and a pronounced Siddarmarkian accent. They’d met following the Tarikah Campaign which had ended the Jihad, and there were dark places behind those green eyes, left by the things she’d had to do to keep herself and her younger sister Lyzbyt alive after the Sword of Schueler massacred every other member of their family.
Lyzbyt had taken vows with the Bédardists of the Church of Charis as Sister Lyzbyt, and she was emerging as a brilliant young psychologist. There was still too much anger inside Elayn for that sort of rapprochement with the Church, even in Charis, but she’d been a member of the inner circle almost from the day of her marriage and she’d grasped both the challenge that circle faced—and its capabilities—with almost frightening clarity.
“What do you mean, Elayn?” Sharleyan asked.
“I think I’m the only member of the conversation who’s seen this kind of madness from the inside.” Lady Elayn’s voice was as dark as her eyes. “When it started in Harchong, I prayed to God that it wouldn’t be as bad as it was in Siddarmark. Now it looks like it’s actually going to be worse. And that means we have to do anything we can—anything, Your Majesty—to … to mitigate it. I know exactly why you don’t want to send troops into the middle of this, Kynt. For that matter, I don’t think any purely military solution would work. I think you’re right that they could help provide at least your ‘islands of stability,’ but we need more than islands. We need to give Star Rising and the others hope, not just soldiers. We need to give them the kind of hope they can extend to other people—to those artisans and guild masters, to the peasants. Even to the serfs.”
“I think all of us agree with that,” Cayleb said soberly, and the others nodded. Young Elayn might be, by other people’s standards, but she was only a year younger than Cayleb himself, with a hard-won wisdom far beyond her years. “The problem is how we do that.”
“We do what Charisians do best, Your Majesty.” She gave him a quirky smile. “We invest. We take those islands of stability and expand them into islands of prosperity.”
“Who do we invest with?” Delthak asked. “You’re right, Elayn. If we could do that—if we could find someone to partner with and Kynt could buy us a big enough window of stability—it would help enormously! Some of the families involved in trade, especially in Boisseau, would see the opportunity in a heartbeat, but I don’t think they have enough capital or enough time to take advantage of it.”
Several heads nodded in agreement with that. The “Nahrmahn Plan”—Merlin’s teasing name for it had actually stuck—seemed to be succeeding, but it was working far better in some places than in others. Charis’ own rate of industrial expansion continued to accelerate, driven by an exuberant tide of innovations utterly foreign to Safehold’s traditional mind-set, and Charisian investors had found scores of partners in the Kingdom of Dohlar, under the auspices of First Councilor Thirsk. The Grand Duchy of Silkiah was another success story, with Silkiahan investors almost trampling one another to buy shares in the new Silkiah Canal Company and import Charisian manufactory techniques. South Harchong, unlike the northern half of the empire, had also embraced the new opportunities, although the Harchongians had so far chosen to go largely their own way, with minimal Charisian involvement. After all, everyone knew how the Emperor and his heir felt about Charis, and no one wanted to be pasting any targets to their own backs. There were a handful of quiet partnerships underway in the south, but nothing like the scale in Dohlar and Silkiah.
Yet if the effort was succeeding in those places, it was going less well in the rest of Safehold, including North Harchong and, unfortunately, the Republic of Siddarmark.
“I don’t pretend to understand economics as well as you and Baron Ironhill do, Your Grace,” Elayn said, looking at Duke Delthak’s image. “I do understand that promoting stable economic and industrial growth requires local investors and the local rule of law, though, especially if we want that growth to be sustainable. And I realize Delthak Enterprises is only one investor. Admittedly, you’re the biggest in the entire world, but only one, and not all Charisian investors are as … altruistic as Delthak. I know that, too. But surely there has to be some way!”
“Altruism’s not the best word to describe even my investment strategies, Elayn,” Delthak said. “I do have partners and investors, and I do need to earn them a healthy return if I expect to hang onto them. And especially if I want to attract more of them!”
“You actually said that with a straight face, Ehdwyrd,” Cayleb said in an admiring tone, and Sharleyan stifled a giggle, then poked him with an admonishing toe.
“All right, that’s fair,” the duke acknowledged. “But I haven’t told my shareholders about our real objective. I can’t, now can I? And none of the others—the ones Elayn is pointing out aren’t as noble and altruistic as your humble servant—care a damned thing about spreading our technical infrastructure. Most of them would be just delighted to maintain a total monopoly on it as long as they frigging well can, actually! They’re looking purely at the profit factor when they consider any overseas investment, and if they can’t find local partners or some other damned convincing incentive, they won’t be able—or willing—to free up enough risk capital to do any good. Especially not somewhere where they don’t know if the local authorities are going to be able to stay the local authorities. Elayn’s absolutely right about how important stable, law-abiding local governance is if we expect anyone else to come along for the ride. Hell, that’s a big part of the problem—in a different way, of course—in Siddarmark!”
“Fair e
nough,” Cayleb said in return.
They’d counted heavily on Siddarmarkian participation in their expansion effort. The fact that it didn’t seem likely to be forthcoming, and that the chaos and catastrophe in North Harchong was likely to impact South Harchong, made all of them unpleasantly aware of the cold, fetid breath of apocalypse on the backs of their necks, and—
“Wait a minute,” Merlin said suddenly. “Wait just one minute.”
His wife looked at him, her eyes intent. He didn’t seem to notice. He simply sat there, obviously thinking hard, and then as his expression began to change, she smiled.
“I know that look,” she said. He blinked, then shook himself and gave her a crooked smile of his own. “Out with it!” she commanded.
“Well,” he said, “it’s just occurred to me that all we’re seeing right now in Harchong is the devastation and massacres. At least, that’s all we’re looking at, because it’s so horrible and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do to stop it. Which, unfortunately, is probably true for most of North Harchong. But you and Nahrmahn are right about Boisseau and Cheshire’s social matrix. And that means that what we have in those provinces is actually an opportunity.”
“An opportunity?” Cayleb’s expression made it clear that only his respect for Merlin’s past accomplishments had kept the incredulity out of his tone, and Merlin smiled again.
“We’re all in agreement that we need to actively involve everyone we can in this industrialization effort, which is why we’re letting the ‘private sector’ carry the primary burden. None of us like how some of our more unscrupulous Charisians are doing that, but Ehdwyrd’s right that relying on the profit motive—and basic greed—means somebody will exploit every opportunity out there. He’s also right about the situation in Harchong. The way it’s headed, no private investor’s going to risk the capital to accomplish anything in time to keep Star Rising and his effort from sinking. But we’ve got the Mohryah Lode.”
Cayleb frowned, then his eyebrows arched, and Merlin nodded.
The enormous wealth under Silverlode Island’s Mohryah Mountains had come as quite a shock when Nahrmahn found a description of it in the notes Pei Shan-wei’s survey crews had left in Owl’s memory. It dwarfed Old Earth’s Comstock Lode. So far, the prospecting crews, working without benefit of Shan-wei’s notes for obvious reasons, had found considerably less than a third of the major ore bodies under the mountains, yet those same notes indicated that what they had found would ultimately produce in excess of ten million tons of silver and six and a half million tons of gold.
And that was barely the tip of an iceberg that belonged—in toto—not to the Charisian Empire, but specifically to the House of Ahrmahk. In terms of real buying power, Cayleb and Sharleyan Ahrmahk were undoubtedly the wealthiest individuals in the history of the human race.
Period.
Obviously, they couldn’t simply dump that kind of gold and silver into their own economy without fatally overheating it. But.…
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” Cayleb asked after a moment.
“I’m suggesting a variant on what was once called the ‘Marshall Plan’ back on Old Earth. If we don’t have Harchongese investors, we create them. We make Crown-guaranteed loans to qualified Harchongians—and we define ‘qualified’ as loosely as we can get away with—at a zero interest rate, or damned close to it. Face it, we’ve got money to burn in the Mohryah Lode. Even if half of them default, we can write it off the books and keep right on going. But by making the loans available in the first place, we provide a route to that prosperity Elayn was just talking about. Plus, we get all the goodwill for having ridden to the rescue, and having been mighty generous when we did. And it gives us the opportunity to create a huge opening for industrial expansion in North Harchong, of all places!”
“I like it,” Delthak said after a moment, then grinned suddenly. “We can call it the Ahrmahk Plan!”
“I like it, too,” Archbishop Maikel said. “But if we’re going to do that, we need to set up the mechanism very carefully to make sure it doesn’t turn into something totally dominated by the local nobles. Ehdwyrd and Elayn’s point about the need for stability and the assurance of the rule of law will be essential for outside investors. And if we want to convince peasants and serfs that this offers prosperity for them, as well, we can’t create a situation that simply reinforces the existing elites’ control!”
“Agreed.” Merlin nodded firmly. “I’m sure we can draft terms to mandate the conditions—both of governance and of broad-based participation—under which we make them available, though. And since we’re guaranteeing the loans, I think it’d be reasonable to assign Charisian administrators to them to make sure that Harchongese propensity for graft doesn’t get a toehold. Offering to provide Charisian industrial advisors—like Brahd Stylmyn, if you can spare him, Ehdwyrd—for any project we underwrite would probably be a good idea, too. As long as we make it clear those advisors are being paid by the Crown, not by the people they’re advising, at least.”
“Excellent idea,” Nahrmahn approved. “If we’re paying them, the Harchongians will know their ‘advisors’ aren’t skimming anything from their cash flow.” The dead little Emeraldian chuckled suddenly. “Graft-free administration! I wonder how many Harchongians will drop dead from sheer shock when they hear about that!”
.VII.
Manchyr Palace, City of Manchyr, Princedom of Corisande, Empire of Charis.
“Do you need anything else, My Lord?”
“No, Sailys. Thank you, I think we have everything we need … as always,” Koryn Gahrvai said with a smile.
“Well, it’s good of you to say so, anyway, Sir,” Sailys Kylmohr said. He looked around the sun-filled dining room again, checking the arrangements, giving the table one last examination, then bowed. “If you discover that you do need anything else, just ring,” he said.
“We will, I promise,” Gahrvai told him.
Kylmohr nodded and withdrew, and Gahrvai looked across the table.
“Maybe we should find something to complain about—or demand, anyway,” he said. “I think he feels … underutilized with Daivyn and Irys and the kids gone.”
Nimue Chwaeriau chuckled. Over the last two or three years, she’d discovered she really liked Koryn Gahrvai, and part of it was their shared sense of humor. And of the absurd, she acknowledged, thinking about how … unlikely it was that the two of them should be sitting here in this sunny room over nine hundred years after her own death.
“I don’t know if he feels ‘underutilized,’” she said out loud. “But judging from this spread, the cooks certainly do. Look at all this food! What? They don’t know how to cook for less than twenty?”
Gahrvai laughed, but she did have a point. The breakfast table was spread with melon balls, cut fruit, toast and biscuits, a side platter of sliced cheeses and smoked fish, half a dozen different sauces and dressings, an enormous warming pan heaped with scrambled eggs, another containing enough bacon for at least six people, and two steaming pots—one of chocolate for him and one of cherrybean for Nimue.
“If you don’t want to break their hearts, you’re going to have to help me eat at least some of this,” he pointed out.
“I know. And it’s not as if I can’t enjoy the taste,” she said, pouring herself a cup of cherrybean and adding a miserly dollop of cream. “There are times I wish I could actually feel hungry, though,” she went on a bit wistfully, looking down into the cup as she stirred it. “It’s really true that hunger is the best spice.”
“You can’t program yourself to feel that?” he asked curiously, and she shrugged.
“I can, but it’s not the same, somehow. It’s like I’m fooling myself and my brain knows it.” She frowned, still stirring but more for something to do than because the cherrybean needed it. “It’s not an actual sensation, I suppose. Not like my sense of touch or smell, when I’m absorbing real stimuli.” She finished stirring and laid the spoon a
side. “It’s just different at the end of the day. I never played with my PICA as much as a lot of people who owned them did, so I never really realized that particular difference existed … before.”
“I imagine there are a lot of differences,” he observed, and she looked up quickly, arching an eyebrow. “It’s just that you don’t talk very much about what I guess you might call ‘before and after,’” he said with a small shrug.
“Aren’t very many people I could talk about it with.”
“Not outside the circle, anyway,” he replied, but it was an acknowledgment of what she’d said, she realized. Not agreement with it.
Irys and Hektor, with Nimue’s strong backing, had nominated him for the inner circle shortly after Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s execution, and he’d taken the truth in stride better than many other nominees. And he’d also cast the deciding vote against recruiting his father. Much as he loved Sir Rysel, he feared the true nature of the inner circle’s war against the Church of God Awaiting would have pushed Earl Anvil Rock’s flexibility one push too far, the same way it had Ruhsyl Thairis. He’d also proven even more perceptive than Nimue had thought he was.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said after a moment. “I can’t talk about it with anyone outside the circle. I just … don’t talk about it with the rest of you. Not even Merlin, really.”
“Why not?” he asked, sitting back in his chair, and her eyes widened at the … gentleness of that simple, two-word question.
Gahrvai breakfasted with Daivyn, Irys and Hektor, and the royal children two or three times each five-day, and Major Chwaeriau had become a part of the royal family of Corisande, not simply its most deadly bodyguard. As such, she normally joined them at the table, for breakfast, at least, and the adults had gotten into the habit of turning those occasions into working sessions as well as meals, although the twins were getting old enough to pick up on conversations around them, which meant they’d have to change that soon. But she’d been a little surprised when she’d realized that Gahrvai had become a close friend, not just a colleague. Indeed, she hadn’t realized until recently how much she looked forward to the days when he joined them, as well.